Money.net hires Pearlstine to start news service to compete with Bloomberg

Norman Pearlstine, a former top editor at Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and Time, has been hired to start a news service for Money.net, which has been building a low-cost alternative to Bloomberg’s data terminals, reports Nathaniel Popper of the New York Times.

Popper writes, “Mr. Pearlstine is tasked with building a news feed for Money.net that will be based on machine-generated news bulletins and stories. He will be hiring journalists to help guide the computers and potentially supplement them with reporting — part of a broader move toward the automation of journalism.

“‘I think I know what the customer is looking for, and I think I know where smart developers and journalists working together can add value,’ Mr. Pearlstine said in an interview. ‘My bias is toward not spending a lot of time duplicating things that everybody else is doing — trying to think about what timely, usable information is for a professional investor.’

“Mr. Pearlstine was the chief content officer at Bloomberg until 2013, shortly before Mr. Bloomberg ended his final term as New York City’s mayor and rejoined the company he founded in the 1980s. Mr. Pearlstine is currently the vice chairman of Time Inc. and will remain in that role.

“Money.net was founded by another former top executive at Bloomberg, Morgan Downey, who got to know Mr. Pearlstine when they were both at the company.”

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